Seven children were killed Wednesday in the fiery crash of a car that was crushed between a truck and school bus in rural northern Florida. At least three children on the bus were seriously injured. The truck hit the car from behind and pushed it into the bus, causing the car to burst into flames, said Lt. Mike Burroughs of the Florida Highway Patrol. All seven of the people riding in the car were killed. Their ages ranged from 15 years to 21 months, police said. CBS News correspondent Peter King reports that the victims are all from one family with small children. It was unclear why the children were unaccompanied. ... http://www.cbsnews.com

Activists at the World Social Forum on Wednesday called for decisive actions against poverty, an immediate end to the war in Iraq and a radical shift away from free trade. The leftist event, held to counter the market-friendly World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, features discussions of subjects such as "Imperialism the greatest threat to humanity" and "Socialism of the 21st century." "We came to raise our complaints about the lack of justice in the world, the hunger, the war," said Catalina Herazo, a 25-year-old Colombian student activist....http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1541990&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

The US military has become dangerously overstretched because of the scale of its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, two reports have warned. One, by former officials in the Clinton administration, said the pressure of repeated deployments was very corrosive and could have long-term effects. The second, ordered by the Pentagon and yet to be released, reportedly calls the army "stretched to breaking point". The US defence secretary dismissed the claims as out of date or misdirected. About 138,000 US troops remain in Iraq, on top of deployments to Afghanistan and Kosovo. The study commissioned by Democratic members of Congress listed former Defence Secretary William Perry and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright among its authors. It said the US military had performed admirably in recent operations but was under "enormous strain". ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4649066.stm

A gusher of impressive quarterly and annual profits for the oil industry is going to attract a lot of attention on Wall Street and Capitol Hill in the coming week. ConocoPhillips kicked off the fourth-quarter earnings season for big oil on Wednesday with an impressive $13.5 billion annual profit, up 66 percent from its 2004 performance. The rest of the major integrated oil and gas firms will march out their end-of-year books during the coming week and a half. Investors will likely be pleased by record profits, but a rising chorus of outrage from oil company detractors will likely spur some political heat for the firms. ...http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=1541434&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312&ad=true

The ruling Fatah Party backed by the U.S. took first place in Palestinian elections as the Islamic group Hamas, which has fought Israel with suicide bombers, deepened its challenge to peace efforts by winning a third of the votes, exit polls showed. Fatah, the party founded by the late Yasser Arafat, got 42 percent of the ballots cast throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip yesterday, compared with 35 percent for the Hamas-supported Change and Reform list of candidates, according to a poll by the independent Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. A poll conducted by Bir Zeit University in the West Bank showed Fatah with an edge of 45 percent to 39 percent. While both Israeli and U.S. officials repeated after the voting that Hamas can't be allowed to join the governing Palestinian Authority as it tries to build the foundation for a future state, the armed group's electoral showing demonstrated the depth of support for the rejectionist movement. ...http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aP8zKGVojdIw&refer=home

Bush and his top national security advisers are trying to change the debate — and even the vocabulary — about the National Security Agency’s controversial electronic monitoring program. Don’t call it domestic spying, they say. It’s a terrorist surveillance program. Americans have been uneasy about the program since it was first disclosed last month. According to polls, slightly more than half think the government should first get a warrant before eavesdropping on people in the United States whose calls and e-mails the government believes involve al-Qaida. Bush, along with the nation’s top military intelligence officer and the attorney general, has made the case in a three-day pitch. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the government’s No. 2 intelligence official, tried to drive the point home using air travel.Just change the words and most people will buy it. It has worked so many times before so they will try it again. Will the American public ever catch on? ...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11026705/from/RSS/